


Let Me Pluck You Down

by Gileonnen



Series: The Hand That Wields the Sword [6]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Breaking Up with One's Dom, Breaking up is hard to do, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mentions of Selling Sentient Beings, Ownership Kink, The Dark Side of Moral Relativism, Threatened Intimate Partner Violence, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, collaring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:16:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: After a stranger's tip puts him on edge, Kalith asks to see the Spider's black-market goods. What he sees there alters their relationship beyond repair.
Relationships: Guardian/The Spider (Destiny)
Series: The Hand That Wields the Sword [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1351438
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Let Me Pluck You Down

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains spoilers for siding with the Drifter over the Vanguard.

The crisp breeze along the Wall makes the banners snap; it catches in Kalith's robes and tugs at his long hair. Still, the sun is a bright white-golden overhead, the Traveler shining with a radiance all its own, and in the warmth of their light, Kalith can't bring himself to mind the chill. He's spent too long away from sunlight and other Guardians, and their closeness fills him with a quiet joy that eases some part of him that he hadn't known was tense. He strolls from stall to stall, idly picking up some seraphite from Kadi and browsing the shaders on offer at Eververse. The deep purples and greens tempt him--jewel tones look good against his dark skin--but he's worn white and gold so long that he'd feel strange in other colors.

Besides, his collar is white and gold, and it doesn't take shaders.

As he turns away from the counter, he finds a Titan watching him. He's seen her before a few times, trading helium and alkane to the Spider--a short, barrel-chested Awoken woman with her hair cropped close to her head. Her expression doesn't exactly promise a fight, but there's a wariness in the line of her brows, a barely suppressed rage in the set of her jaw that puts him on edge. "Can I help you?" says Kalith.

Her silver eyes flick down to his collar, then back up to hold his gaze. "You're the Spider's man," she says. Her voice is surprisingly deep, rough as the broken regolith of the Moon. "His enforcer."

Impossible to imagine a Guardian drawing a gun on another, with civilians and the Vanguard all around. Equally impossible not to see how much she wants to. "Among other things."

"Right. Among other things." She tips up her chin as though it neither surprises nor impresses her. Her mouth draws into a hard line. "You've seen what he sells, haven't you?"

He knows what people trade, when they come to the Spider--glimmer, yes, and curiosities from across the system, but also favors. Secrets. Information that he can use to apply pressure in exactly the right places. When he looks into this near-stranger's eyes, he thinks she's offering something as powerful and as intangible. "Of course I have," he says. It feels like the wrong answer.

" _Of course you have_ , you piece of shit. So you know that he sells _people,_ " she snaps.

Kalith's whole body goes cold. "What the fuck are you talking about."

She folds her arms and leans back. She's half a head shorter than he is, but in that moment, she seems to tower over him. "Ask him to show you his special stock. Bring your Ghost. I bet they'll want to see, too." Then she turns away and stalks off toward the Bazaar, shouldering aside a pair of gossiping engineers as she goes.

For a moment, Kalith wants to chase her down and demand an answer-- _Sells people, what the hell do you mean_ \--but something holds him frozen where he stands.

It's better for him to let her go. Whatever she said, however she said it, he wouldn't believe her. She's been to see the Spider a handful of times; he's been the Spider's lover for years now, welcomed into his schemes and his crimes and his bed. There is no service he has refused and no enemy he has spared. He and the Spider know every dark crevice of each other now, and they have never yet shied away.

The Spider is selfish, mercenary, a law unto himself--but he isn't a slave-trader. He uses people, but only so far as they let themselves be used.

A cold wind cuts across Kalith's face. He shivers.

* * *

A few days later, he ships out for the Tangled Shore again. There's work to be done there--a few of the Spider's contacts have mentioned shipments from New Monarchy going missing, not that New Monarchy themselves would admit to it. The remnants of the Red Legion are rallying around some upstart Psion in Soriks's Cut, which could spell trouble for Lee and Osiris on Mercury. And Kalith has heard whispers that the Fanatic is back, which is troubling enough all on its own.

Kalith is the Vanguard's eyes and ears, and the Spider's merciless hand. For what little law there is on the Shore, he is its instrument. He cannot afford to falter.

"Any new bounties for me?" he asks over his private comm channel, and he hears the Spider chuckle at the other end.

"Why don't you come and find out."

Kalith's cheeks heat. He has some calibrations for Banshee that he was hoping to get done to settle in--just ten minutes of picking off shanks with a sniper rifle--but at the sound of the Spider's voice, he summons his Sparrow and slings himself astride. He guns the engine, and a contrail of sparks showers the ground behind him as he jumps the barricade to the Spider's safehouse.

At the last bend in the corridor, Kalith leaps free of his Sparrow just before it skids into a heap of old servitor parts. He takes a moment to transmat away his helmet, pat down his robes and fix his sleeves, but he's still flushed and out of breath when he steps down into the throne room. "Spider," he says, and kneels.

The Spider is waiting for him, reclining on his throne with a golden Ghost shell held between his fingers. His bodyguards are nowhere to be seen; he knows by now that Kalith would never refuse his summons. "Eager as always, my elegant friend. I have some work for you, if you're interested."

"I wouldn't call serving you _work._ "

The Spider chuckles. "Then I'm sure you won't insist on being paid for it. Come here."

Kalith rises in one long, fluid motion. It doesn't feel like a thing he's chosen to do--it feels as though his body is wedded to the Spider's will.

The Spider sets the Ghost shell aside and draws Kalith in with a sharp claw hooked beneath his collar. His skin is warm where it rests against Kalith's throat; his slow, heavy pulse is a caress against Kalith's collarbone. Kalith closes his eyes and lets himself be pulled close, lets the Spider retrace his face with sure hands.

After all this time, Kalith is still unused to being treated like something fragile and fine. He always half-hopes that the Spider will handle him roughly, and he's always surprised at how this gentleness eases him.

"My elegant friend," the Spider whispers against Kalith's neck. Kalith feels the rush of his breath and the faint, sharp promise of his teeth. "The jewel of my collection."

"Yours," says Kalith, like an echo. He longs so deeply to be devoured. "All of me, yours."

The Spider skins off Kalith's gloves one by one, then unclasps his robes to let them fall from his shoulders and hips. His narrow palms skim from rib to hip, mapping anew the scattered scars on Kalith's body.

Some are new--healed, but not erased. Earned in the Spider's service, like a long rough ledger of favors repaid.

When the Spider offers his fingers to suck, Kalith takes him in; when he offers his cock, Kalith takes him in, stroking him with hands and lips and eager, straining throat. The Spider holds him there with two hands tangled in Kalith's hair, urging him ever deeper, until Kalith's eyes stream and his throat clenches like a fist. His whole body bends around the Spider's lap, taut and aching for release--but the Spider does not deign to finish him until he's dripping with the Spider's come and begging for requital.

In the end, though, he does requite him. The Spider is cruel, but not only cruel.

Afterward, Kalith towels away sweat and tears and come, then he climbs up to nestle in the Spider's lap. His limbs feel warm and heavy, suffused with something richer and headier than Light. "I hope that wasn't all the work you had planned for me," he says, and it comes out almost a laugh. "This, I'll do for free, but for Etheric Spirals, you'll have to pay me."

"You're worth every penny," the Spider says against his hair. For all his warmth, his breath is cold with ether.

 _He sells people,_ echoes the Titan's voice in the back of Kalith's mind, and at the memory, all the warm lassitude of repletion leaches out of him.

He can't go on with this doubt in his breast. He betrayed the Spider's faith the moment he began to fear that the Titan's words were true, and that betrayal cannot be undone--there is no recourse but to banish all suspicion.

He takes a deep breath. "You know I would never ask you for anything without making a fair exchange," he says. "You're a businessman. I understand that."

The Spider's hands still on Kalith's back. "But?"

Kalith's heart pounds against his ribs. He can barely make himself breathe. His lungs feel too small, too tight; there's no room for air in them. "I've heard that you have--how should I put this--select merchandise that not everyone can buy. Our intelligence suggests new enemies on your Shore. I want any edge you can give me, and I'm willing to pay a fair price for it." He smiles, but it feels wrong, wrong, wrong. "Or an unfair price, if necessary. You do have to make a living somehow."

The Spider's eyes light. It's like a tug on a baited hook, and Kalith hates himself for casting the line. "I think you'll find my prices are ... reasonable. Take a look. See if there's anything you like."

He tips Kalith off of his lap and reaches for his console. The metal floor is cold beneath Kalith's heels.

A panel in the wall slides quietly open, revealing a stock of treasures in shielded display cases--so many that at first Kalith can scarcely take them all in. A spill of enormous cut diamonds from the Crystal Barrows; liquors from the Golden Age, distilled on Mars and Venus and Io; the root of a Vex Mind, struggling vainly to branch and blossom. Blades of crystal and guns of phaseglass; the heart of an Ahamkara, preserved in a stasis chamber.

A Ghost, projecting again and again, _Please, please, please, let me go, Guardian, please, help me._

The icy dread in the pit of Kalith's chest crystallizes into something dense and hard and _burning._ "Let him go," he says.

The Spider's mandibles twitch, as though this is just another game to him. "After all your talk of fair exchange? I think not."

"I'm not playing with you right now," snaps Kalith, and his armor materializes around him like a chrysalis. He feels sick. "That Ghost is a person. Let him go."

The Spider draws himself up on his throne, eyes flashing dangerously. "Have a care, Guardian. Whatever line you're trying to draw here, you're already well on the other side of it."

"How _dare_ you try to justify this to me--"

"How _dare_ I?" The Spider moves faster than Kalith expects--his hand fists in Kalith's robe, forcing him close. "How many thousands have you killed for me? How many Fallen and Psions, Hive and Scorn? And you enjoyed it," he sneers, his voice rich and relishing. His breath tastes of ether. "You'd come to me drenched in their blood and tell me how good it felt to murder them in my name."

"That was different," says Kalith, low. Even now, he craves this rough grip, this naked contempt. His whole body throbs with arousal and shame.

"Why was it different? Weren't they people?"

"Someone had to keep the peace--"

"Don't tell me you were thinking of _keeping the peace_ when you begged for me to make you my pet. You murdered them so that I'd scratch you behind your ears and tell you that you'd been good." The Spider catches Kalith's chin in one strong secondary hand and forces him to meet his eyes. "Well, little morsel, you're no better than I am."

Between them, Kalith draws a flaming sword. "Maybe I'm not," he says. "Let me go."

The Spider uncurls his fingers from Kalith's robe one by one, then raises all four hands in a placating gesture. Kalith looks up into his unmasked face, into those wary eyes that he's grown to love, and sees only calculation there. "The Vanguard still needs me on the Shore. Don't do something you'll regret."

It's too late for that now. "I'm leaving," says Kalith. He backs away toward the display case with the dawnblade held between them; Pelagia is already decrypting the anti-transmat field. "I'm taking the Ghost. Don't try to stop me."

The Spider says nothing as the field drops around the Ghost, and the battered shell shimmers and vanishes. He says nothing as the burning sword in Kalith's hands fades away, leaving them empty and cold.

Only when Kalith turns to go does he speak, in a rumble that carries through the hollow corridors. "Don't stay away long. With the right incentives, I'd be willing to forgive this ... transgression."

Kalith freezes with his foot on the stair. He would give anything to take that offer--kneel and be absolved, then fling himself back into the Spider's arms and pretend that nothing has changed. Maybe he could even convince himself of it. But to do that would mean betraying everything he's sworn himself to protect. "I'm not the one who needs to be forgiven," he says, willing steel into his voice. "It's over."

A low laugh rings out behind him. "So you say. But no matter where you go, you'll always come back to the Spider."


End file.
